Snow Leopard’s “Wake on Demand” could lead to Apple TV bliss

If you are using Snow Leopard and have some newer Apple hardware, there's a …

With the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple has introduced a new wake on network activity feature called "Wake on Demand" that uses Bonjour to to alert other machines on a network that their services are being requested. Perhaps most intriguing is the fact that the feature works over wireless networks as long as certain hardware requirements are met.

To use the technology over a wired network, a user must have either a 2007 (or newer) AirPort Extreme Base Station or a 2008 (or newer) Time Capsule with the most recent firmware installed, according to MacUser. If wake on WiFi activity is really what you're jonesing for, then you'll probably need a Mac released in 2009. Although Apple hasn't released an official list yet, MacUser found that machines created before then didn't seem to work. If you want to check if your machine supports Wake on Demand over WiFi you can check in System Preferences > Network > Airport, and then look under Wake on Wireless.

Potential uses for the tech include sparsely used file servers, or machines sharing printers or scanners, for instance. Right now, it's unclear if the tech can be used to awaken portables that have their lids closed, but we can imagine arguments both for and against that.

What seems to be true is that one potentially popular use—accessing iTunes shares for use with an Apple TV or even another Mac—may not be immediately possible. After all, iTunes only sees libraries being shared from active machines running iTunes with sharing enabled. It seems it would be necessary to first awaken a machine some other way before accessing the library.

A potential workaround for this may be to use an alias pointing to a share located on the sleeping machine. This way, you could awaken it and just always have iTunes running on that machine. Since opening a share from an Apple TV isn't something most people can do easily, though, this method wouldn't work. What would be ideal is if Apple released a version of iTunes or Front Row that remembers recently shared libraries, allowing it to locate and awaken the appropriate machines based on previous internal IP addresses. That is, of course, if the AppleTV's hardware and software supported the new functionality.

You will be able to read more about "Wake on Demand" and just about every other feature in Ars Technica's upcoming in-depth review of Snow Leopard, which should hit sometime early next week.

Hmmm... is this a side feature of Intel N cards with their remote management over wireless, and/or efi? I read of this on Apple's site and I am impressed. I can't use WOL via my Tomato router since all my computers are behind a switch.

Have you verified this doesn't already work with AppleTV? If you leave iTunes running on a computer when that computer goes to sleep, the Bonjour services will be handed off to the Bonjour Sleep Proxy. Attempting to connect to that Bonjour service will cause the sleeping computer that provides the service to wake up.

Originally posted by johnbrissenden:Maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing, but there's a "Wake for network access" option under System Preferences>Energy Saver. (I'm using a 2008 Penryn Black MacBook)

This feature has never worked for me. I have tried on several computers.

That's a slightly different beast. The "Wake for network/administrator access" option requires a specially formatted packet to wake it from sleep. There are a few options on the Mac to do this like Wake Up.

I can't wait for Ars' review of Snow Leopard. Hopefully you'll go deep into explaining how Grand Central works. It'd be interesting to see if the infrastructure is there so that in a future version of OS X, they might be able to use LLVM and JIT compilation to push code between CPU cores and GPU cores dynamically depending on what resources are available and what is optimal.

Lack of OpenCL support in the HD2000 and HD3000 series is supposed to be a hardware limitation. It'd be interesting to find out what that limitation is.

Beyond controversy over which Macs support the 64-bit kernel and why, it'd also be good to find out why currently onlt the 9400M is listed as supporting H.264 acceleration. The nVidia 8000, 9000, and GTX285 all have similar PureVideo HD engines and capabilities. And all ATI GPUs since the HD2000 series support full hardware H.264 acceleration as well. Even the ATI X1000 and nVidia 7000 supports partial H.264 acceleration. Maybe Apple just hasn't had the time to write the drivers or more likely don't want to support so much older hardware?

Started Front Row on another box running 10.5.8, go to "sources", "type" the password, MB wakes up, video plays on the other Mac from the MB.

So it works over wifi with a late 2008 system (but YMMV). Wake on LAN has been around for ethernet for ages so it should probably work wiredly for any system that can run 10.6. And if Front Row can wake up a snowy leopard, then an AppleTV should be able to do the same thing.

You do need power connected and either the lid open or an external screen connected for laptops according to Apple.

Originally posted by Evil_Merlin:Its going to take a LOT more than that for AppleTV to be anything even near even adequate. Right now it simply SUCKS.

See the Xbox 360 and Media Center for the right way to do things.

I'm very interested in what Media Center w/ an Xbox 360 "got right" cuz honestly the 360 was basically unusable as an Extender. It's possible it's improved with NXE... who knows...

I was thinking that though my PS3 is capable of this, it does *not* support bonjour. Or NAT-PMP. Rather they choose to support DLNA and UPnP AV. In fact for the most part few business's have a serious interest in Bonjour in the past but it's growing. Yet what NAT devices other than Apple's support NAT-PMP?

I'm very interested in what Media Center w/ an Xbox 360 "got right" cuz honestly the 360 was basically unusable as an Extender. It's possible it's improved with NXE... who knows...

I was thinking that though my PS3 is capable of this, it does *not* support bonjour. Or NAT-PMP. Rather they choose to support DLNA and UPnP AV. In fact for the most part few business's have a serious interest in Bonjour in the past but it's growing. Yet what NAT devices other than Apple's support NAT-PMP?

So far I've tested this feature with my 2008 iMac and 2007 AEBS. It works when I call up file sharing and screen sharing from my Macbook Air on the same wireless network (haven't had time to wander over to another wireless point I can log on to and try using back to my mac yet nor have I tried logging on to my Macbook Air from my iMac because it seems kind of pointless). I haven't yet tried printing because I don't want to waste a sheet of paper on something that will probably work. Oh, it also works using iStat on my iPhone using the mobile network as well as the AEBS (you have to ask iStat to connect twice when on the mobile network because it takes some time to wake the computer up and the first request times out before you can connect).

So this looks like a great feature for people that infrequently use their home machine while out and don't want to have the comp on 24/7.

PS: The feature shows up as "Wake for network access" on my computer. It doesn't say anything about wireless access (even though it works).

OK, here's the skinny: I have an early 2009 MBP, a newer (dual band) Airport Extreme running 7.4.2 firmware, and an Apple TV running the latest rev. The MBP and the ATV are both on wireless. I am hosting NO content on the ATV. If my laptop is asleep I can browse to my movies on the ATV, and my laptop will wake up, display the list and allow me to use them. This is very cool, because this is one of the reasons I wanted Snow Leopard. I have been hosting all of my movies and music on my Windows desktop, with iTunes running. However, there are two things wrong with that. First, because my Windows machine is always loading security updates and rebooting, I often have to go trudging into the other room to reopen iTunes when I want to watch the ATV. Second, I travel with my laptop, and consequently want all of my iTunes content with me. This keeps me from having to manage content on both computers. In fact, I am thinking of just wiping the iTunes library off of my Windows desktop.

Unfortunately, the wake up feature does NOT work if the lid is closed on my laptop. This is a bummer, because closing my lid is generally what I like to do when the laptop is not being used. It goes to sleep instantly, and keeps the laptop cooler. There's got to be something that Apple can do to make the feature available while the computer is closed.

Originally posted by johnbrissenden:Maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing, but there's a "Wake for network access" option under System Preferences>Energy Saver. (I'm using a 2008 Penryn Black MacBook)

quote:

Originally posted by johnbrissenden:This feature has never worked for me. I have tried on several computers.

The feature works, but you have to do it right. The "Wake for network access" feature is based on an existing standard but it only works over wired Ethernet, your network card must support it (recent Macs do) and you have to send the right type of packet. I use the free WakeOnLan utility to wake up my Macs and PCs and it's worked great for a few years now.

This new Apple feature is NOT the same as the option above. It uses Bonjour and a Base Station to do two things: Let you see services on the sleeping Mac, and wake a Mac over wireless, which cannot be done with the regular industry standard (here I'm not talking about the wake-over-wireless mentioned above, since that is relatively new).

quote:

Originally posted by dagamer34:When is Ars gonna do it's mega review of Snow Leopard? It'll probably be the easiest way to convince people of the benefits of Snow Leopard.

They'll do it when they told you they would, at the end of the article.

Since you've got to have an Apple base station to make this work anyway, the ideal solution for iTunes sharing would be to get rid of the server machine entirely -- instead, just run an iTunes server directly on the base station. Too much can go wrong with wireless wake-up: laptop lid is closed, iTunes is not running, etc. If Airport Extreme had an iTunes server built in, you could just plug in your external hard drive and be good to go.

(In order for a headless iTunes library to work, there would need to be some drastic improvements to the sharing features. You'd have to have full write access to a shared library. And, where multiple users were involved using one consolidated library, you'd probably want to be able to allow users to filter their personal view of the contents.)

The Bonjour Sleep Proxy is basically launchd for Bonjour. When the machine is not running (sleeping), the base station advertises its Bonjour services on behalf of the machine. Accessing those services causes the machine to wake on-demand. It's an extension of wake-on-LAN access. It's the difference between a program having to start a helper process itself and just sending a message to a Mach port to launch the process on-demand.